Like Dodge, but with a chance to hurt the enemy! What could go wrong?

Well, in my experience quite a bit. First of all it's much more expensive than dodge is, which can cause extreme opportunity cost as you have to choose between taking damage now, and having a better board setup next turn. Furthermore the reflected damage is not guaranteed, which kind of negates a huge amount of this card's benefit.

Now, in theory you can run a sadism run where (Slight campaign mechanic spoilers) ------ you intentionally fill the bag with these negative nancy tokens (... not as bad an idea as it sounds on Expert difficulty) ------ and I can't comment on the strength of this card then, but in a more vanilla run it can be pretty unlikely to trigger.

I think, like Song of the Dead without a better way to control the chaos bag, extremely swingy cards are going to remain cool in theory, but bad in practice.

This card needs combo effects to be good. Namely, consider using this with Jacqueline Fine around, Olive McBride, or Dark Prophecy. Also Eldritch Inspiration can make the damage to the enemy go off twice. Canceling the attack and not getting the return damage on the enemy is a subpar effect for how expensive this card is, so you want to try to get the return damage every time.

Also worth noting that this works on Elites, so this can cause some big bads to hit themselves for a bunch of damage, which can be very useful.

17 Jan 2023. Used Hypnotic Gaze x2 on The Devourer Below. With sheer luck, the boss dealt 3x2 damage to itself. Very useful for the Elites and the boss. Instant save for 1 person and damage to the boss.